All's Dell that ends well!
Today I received, totally free of charge, a Dell Latitude D400 together with external media drive with DVD and FDD bays, plus MS Office 2003 SBE to replace the Latitude LT which Dell's repair people broke.
So it woud be remiss of me not to mention that a letter to the UK CEO had the desired result and I now have a good back-up computer to use.
Thank you, Dell!